Manhunt for ex-officer wanted in killings centers on Calif. resort

BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. - Heavy snow hampered the second day of a mountaintop manhunt yesterday for a fugitive former policeman wanted as a suspect in three California murders.

BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. - Heavy snow hampered the second day of a mountaintop manhunt yesterday for a fugitive former policeman wanted as a suspect in three California murders.

Investigators sought clues to whether Christopher Dorner, who is accused of declaring war on police in an Internet posting that railed against his 2008 firing, was holed up in the San Bernardino mountains east of Los Angeles or had slipped away undetected.

Police across the region continued to chase down unconfirmed sightings and other leads.Police have said they think Dorner was carrying multiple weapons, including an assault-style rifle, though a Facebook posting attributed to him suggested that he might be even more heavily armed.

"Do not deploy airships or gunships. SA-7 Manpads will be waiting," the message said, in a reference to a Russian-made, shoulder-launched missile system.

The manhunt focused on the hillsides and cabins near the community of Big Bear Lake, a popular ski resort about 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles. Dorner's burned pickup truck was found abandoned there on Thursday.

The truck turned up in the mountains hours after police say Dorner exchanged gunfire with two officers, grazing one, and later ambushed two more policemen in their patrol car at a stoplight, killing one and leaving the other wounded.The former Navy lieutenant also is suspected in the weekend shooting deaths of a campus-security officer and his fiancee, the daughter of a retired Los Angeles police captain singled out for blame in Dorner's manifesto for his dismissal from the LAPD.The heavy snowfall around Big Bear slowed the pace of the manhunt and prevented infrared-equipped helicopters from returning to the skies.

But a team of more than 100 law-enforcement officers, some of them riding in "snowcat" tractor vehicles and armored personnel carriers, kept up a ground search with dogs.San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said the manhunt would press on "until either we discover that he's left the mountain or we find him."

Also yesterday, authorities conducted door-to-door searches of more than 200 vacant cabins dotting the high country above town."We just want to make sure he doesn't find a place to hide out," McMahon said.Ski resorts and businesses in the area remained open, though visitors seemed to acknowledge that they were tempting fate."It's almost like a horror movie," said Cayle Rose, 23, who was visiting the area from Beverly Hills.

"We're a bunch of young people headed up to a cabin in the woods, and there's a snowstorm and a madman on the loose."Sighting reports sprang up across southern California yesterday.In Los Angeles, a sheriff's office employee reported seeing a man she thought resembled Dorner in a parking structure outside the city's main jail, prompting a lockdown of the facility while deputies searched the area, sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said.The jail commander, Paul Pietrantoni, confirmed that Dorner's ex-wife works at the facility.